low impact week day four: victory!

the arrival of the electric bill is not normally awaited with bated breath around here, but i was very excited to see it in the mail today. how did we do with conserving last month? we saved 6 dollars off the previous month. that's 86% of the energy used in april. hooray! and hooray for google, with its built-in calculator! we can sure do a lot better, but that's a start. i don't forsee that total dropping during the summer, however, because the air conditioner will need to go in the bedroom window before long. all things considered, one window unit isn't too bad, for the midwest. we'll use it sparingly. work was too crazy today to accidentally buy plastic during my lunchbreak, or to take anything more than a lunch-chomping break. i'm never too busy to skip lunch entirely. just pressed the "forward to voice mail" button and took 10 minutes to stuff some leftovers. so now we're about halfway through low impact week. how am i doing on those goals? line dry your clothes instead of using the dryer check. we actually need to do another load, but i'm not sure that's happening this late in the evening, considering that i need to wash dishes and make lunches as well. take shorter showers and/or use a water saving showerhead shorter showers are happening, to the best of my knowledge. it's hard to judge, as we only have one clock. i'm not timing myself. minimize pre-packaged foods and make more of your own from scratch (NO NEW PLASTIC.) i've had my troubles with the plastic issue, but have thwarted plastic as well. keeping strong for the rest of the week. scratch really isn't an issue in this house, because scratch is cheap. compost your food waste and soiled paper products i'll wave the white flag on this. the compost bin at the garden is making progress on...garden time. in other words, there has not been any progress that i can tell since i heard the bins would be done by the end of last week. when they're done, and the buckets are available to take home, i will do so. not buying a bucket for this purpose when communal ones are coming "soon." take the bus or other public transportation to work and on errands hmmm...haven't done well on this, but not terrible, either. i need a scooter. sign up for an alternative energy plan if available in your area haven't brought this up yet. good thing we saved $6 this month. that's leverage to spend $5 a month on green power. don't use paper towels; when you can, use cloth napkins or towels instead we've discussed this, too, below. we've used kitchen towels for napkins, which is a good start. once again, i don't want to buy a lot, but maybe i'll look around for napkins. so, um, halfway through, i'm doing about half the things i should be doing. that's okay. i'll just do better from now on. noimpactman blogged about plastic today. it really can be nasty stuff. let's try to use less of it, all right? cool!